Security Critical. Initializes a new instance of the Mutex class with a Boolean value that indicates whether the calling thread should have initial ownership of the mutex, a string that is the name of the mutex, and a Boolean value that, when the method returns, indicates whether the calling thread was granted initial ownership of the mutex.

When two or more threads need to access a shared resource at the same time, the system needs a synchronization mechanism to ensure that only one thread at a time uses the resource. Mutex is a synchronization primitive that grants exclusive access to the shared resource to only one thread. If a thread acquires a mutex, the second thread that wants to acquire that mutex is suspended until the first thread releases the mutex.

The Mutex class enforces thread identity, so a mutex can be released only by the thread that acquired it.

If a thread terminates while owning a mutex, the mutex is said to be abandoned. The state of the mutex is set to signaled, and the next waiting thread gets ownership.

Caution:

An abandoned mutex often indicates a serious error in the code. When a thread exits without releasing the mutex, the data structures protected by the mutex might not be in a consistent state. The next thread to request ownership of the mutex can handle this exception and proceed, if the integrity of the data structures can be verified.

In the case of a system-wide mutex, an abandoned mutex might indicate that an application has been terminated abruptly.

Mutexes are of two types: local mutexes, which are unnamed, and named system mutexes. A local mutex exists only within your process. It can be used by any thread in your process that has a reference to the Mutex object that represents the mutex. Each unnamed Mutex object represents a separate local mutex.

Named system mutexes are visible throughout the operating system, and can be used to synchronize the activities of processes. You can create a Mutex object that represents a named system mutex by using a constructor that accepts a name. The operating-system object can be created at the same time, or it can exist before the creation of the Mutex object. You can create multiple Mutex objects that represent the same named system mutex.